For satire to work, it has to have at least a hint of truth. While it's easy to believe that Obama wouldn't be able to pass Econ 101 if he took it, it's not so easy to believe he'd take the class to begin with. For him to be able to maintain the delusion that he's the smartest man in the room, he has to make sure the rooms he puts himself in don't contain any particularly bright people. That's less likely to be the case if he sits down with a bunch of people who intentionally chose a discipline that involves math.

Get Donald Trump on it. He'll stay after him until we see his transcripts AND his health records.

AndyN said...

For satire to work, it has to have at least a hint of truth. While it's easy to believe that Obama wouldn't be able to pass Econ 101 if he took it, it's not so easy to believe he'd take the class to begin with.

A lot of undergrads have to take stuff like that.

I did.

AReasonableMan said...

You guys are aware that the great recession started after seven years of Bush and Cheney and six years of a Republican congress?

Compared to those idiots Obama has not done so badly.

My god, what drivel.

You are aware the Great Depression II started through the crooked machinations of Slobbering Barney and Christopher Dodd, whose handmaiden was none other than Barack Hussein Obama?

You are also aware that Dubya tried any number of times to get Congress to do something about subprime mortgages and the Friend of Angelo and the Friend of Rezko blocked every one of them?

"AReasonableMan said... You guys are aware that the great recession started after seven years of Bush and Cheney and six years of a Republican congress?" What Jay said, plus Bush only had a GOP controlled congress for four years, not six.

Jay said... Hey stupid, you are aware the housing market collapses after 20 years+ of Barney Frank writing housing policy and while the Democrats were in control of Congress, right?

And that Bush tried to tighten up Fannie, Freddie, subprime loans and the CRA, but was defeated.

House Financial Services Committee hearing, Sept. 10, 2003:

Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.): I worry, frankly, that there's a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios. .

House Financial Services Committee hearing, Sept. 25, 2003:

Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. . .

"You guys are aware that the great recession started after seven years of Bush and Cheney and six years of a Republican congress?"

If someone uses gasoline to try to put out a brush fire, we can reasonably blame both the person who was there when it started and the person whose actions made it worse than it might have otherwise been.

The logical response would be to find someone who has experience putting out fires.

"You guys are aware that the great recession started after seven years of Bush and Cheney and six years of a Republican congress? Compared to those idiots Obama has not done so badly."

--> Not to pile on, but you do know that Bush, Cheney and McCain all tried to -stop- the Great Recession and were shut down by such Republican members of Congress as Dodd, Frank and Obama? Maybe you should go back and do some recent history reading? It might help.

I heard that he may never have attended Colombia to begin with and that even if he did he came in on a foreign exchange student visa. I guess the best to prove otherwise is to show the transcripts of his Colombia days. Of course, if that means the Urkel camp has been begging and pleading with Colombia officials to fabricate them. Who knows at this point.

No one, from either party, has called for a Commission ala the 911 Commission to examine the causes & culprits responsible for the Great Recession. I wonder why - of course, no one got fired or lost their job as a result of the 911 Commission Report because that devolved into nothing but a CYA [Jamie Gorelick should be very you thankful she was appointed as a 911 Commissioner and was able to cover her own culpable ass].

Despite some cosmetic "attempts" to rein in the Fannies, the Bush years saw an administration that was proud of its efforts increase minority ownership. A sample article:

Bush seeks to increase minority homeownership

By Thomas A. Fogarty, USA TODAY

In a bid to boost minority homeownership, President Bush will ask Congress for authority to eliminate the down-payment requirement for Federal Housing Administration loans.

***

Nothing-down options are available on the private mortgage market, but, in general, they require the borrower to have pristine credit. Bush's proposed change would extend the nothing-down option to borrowers with blemished credit.

***

In the proposal soon to be delivered to Congress, Bush would allow the FHA to guarantee loans for the full purchase price of the home, plus down-payment costs. As a practical matter, the FHA would guarantee mortgages as high as 103% of the value of the underlying property.

***

FHA loans carry higher risks of delinquency and foreclosure than do private mortgages, and the proposed change presumably will lead to greater losses to the government than the current program does.

Weicher said the added risk will be offset by higher fees charged to borrowers who opt to make no down payment.

Democrats are to blame for the housing crisis, yes. But Republicans are to blame for the proliferation of ticking-time-bomb deriviatives linked to the subprime loans you all claim they were trying to stop. Both parties deserve blame; neither has accepted any. You're being dishonest by suggesting otherwise.

Meanwhile, let's not forget Bush as the supporter of a brand new giant drug entitlement, and the many years he and his Repub Congress spent more and more money, when they were in a position to spend less.

That's not even touching on the money we've flushed down the toilet in Iraq and Afgan....

No, let's not pretend that Bush was an fiscal conservative, because that's a bunch of BS.

I heard from a couple million Americans who are friends of cousins of other Americans that Obama has been a failure for 4 years and should be fired like any other failed executive with no resume of success. It's just a rumor, but these people are right in the middle of this and should know what they are talking about.

Bush wasn't a fiscal conservative, but he was a better steward of the bad ideas and actively tried to correct things. He didn't stand idly by and laugh maniacally as the housing market collapsed like the left tries to paint, to absolve Dodd and Frank of any responsibility. It's important to push back every time, because you let one lie by, and it will grow.

How come no one ever mentions that George W. started out with Clinton and the Democrats' .com recession?And in W.'s administration there was a rapid recovery from that until the housing mortgage bubble burst?

Obama is not the only President to start out with a recession hangover from the previous administration, but he and FDR do have the distinction of presiding over the two administrations in history unable to recover from the misfortune.

It really doesn't matter who did it. It's what they did, and WE let them, so WE did it. Now WE need to fix it.

Until we take the blame and act accordingly, nothing will change.

I - shamefully still a lifelong registered Democrat - pledge to vote for the candidate who I think will reduce the size and scope of government, period. I don't care if they eat dogs, after a nice slow cook on the roof of their gas guzzling limo, or if they are a tree-hugging vegetarian feminazi who shaves body hair where they shouldn't, and doesn't where they should. I'm a one issue voter, and probably for the rest of my life out of necessity.

He also flunked Con Law 101 (so did the "Law Prof") which says in A2S1C4 that Obama is not eligible to be President.

"No person but a natural born Citizen, or a citizen at the time of the ratification of this Constitution, shall be eligible for the office of President." A2S1C4

No wonder the narcissist finds the Constitution flawed!--- It's because it disallows him to be President. How dare those evil framers prevent a man who may want to "fundamentally change" (i.e destroy) America to be President!!!!

"The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners." Minor v. Happersett, 88 US 162, 167; Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 649, 655, 693.

See also Federalist #68 (the prevention of an improper ascendant (foreign ancestor)so as to choose a "creature of our own").

Yet the "Law Prof" even voted for this constitutional disaster. No wonder lawyers know nothing about the constitution!

I think determing who was to blame and televising the beheading of a few of the main culprits would send a message to future elected officials [I am kidding about the televising part unless we can get a really good deal from Pay Per View].

AReasonableMan said...You guys are aware that the great recession started after seven years of Bush and Cheney and six years of a Republican congress?

Compared to those idiots Obama has not done so badly.

8/17/12 11:07 AM

You must have missed the part that Bush took office after the stock market crashed under Clinton in 2000 and the country was already in a recession which was worsened by a one day trillion dollar hit to the economy. Reasonable people stick with facts. Try that sometime.

Incidentally it was Bush and the Fed that stopped the run on the banks that would have lead to an instant depression in 2008. Had Zero done nothing at all from day one the country would have been much better off than it is today. Like an actual recovery. Instead the dems just fucked things up even worse. More people were employed in 2002 than are today and more people were employed in the end of 2008 than are today.

Your really name to call yourself something more accurate, more self descriptive of you comments like proudly and invincibly foolish.

This is entirely due to the author's bizarre treatment of federal trust funds. The treasury securities in the SS trust fund, for example, are simultaneously assets of one federal agency and liabilities of another. They net out on balance, obviously. By that author's odd accounting, the Clinton surpluses would've been larger if SS outlays had exceed FICA revenues.

As the article at your link shows, federal debt held by the public did indeed fall in FY '98, '99, and 2000. That's what it means for the federal government to run a surplus.

Yeah, but what about Christina Romer, the supposed economic brains behind his administration (while she lasted)? The story has to be that this gifted economist isn't so gifted, or that she was giving golden advice, which was completely ignored. In either case, I'm waiting for her to speak on about November 7th. Approximately.

The Bushes', the Georges among them anyway, commitment to conservatism is indeed suspect, but George W. had his war in Iraq as his "Big Thing" to carry through with a hostile press and Congress, so he had to let a lot of things go. It is playing in the Land of If to speculate on what his administration would have done if domestic policy had been all he had to worry about.

The extra part of this Instapundit comment is interesting. They are wondering why the White House estimates of growth and unemployment were/are so consistently wrong. John Cochrane riffed on this this week. He wonders why since we were constantly being told by the president and Geithner that recessions are more severe after financial crises, why were their estimates for recovery so rosy?

I know Bush isn't running, but we don't need Jay and Crack reinventing history to make him look like a fiscal conservative.

Yep. Bush partnered with the Democrats to bring us NCLB and Medicare part D. My theory at the time was he was willing to trade anything on domestic spending as long as the Democrats were willing to fund the war.

But in retrospect he has this wealthy scion's noblesse oblige thing going that would have had him overspending in any case.

The Romney endorsement @ rejahm's link is signed by at least one Nobel laureate (Robert Lucas) who's switching sides having paid his white-guilt dues in '08:

I ask about a report that he voted for Barack Obama in 2008, supposedly only the second time he had voted for a Democrat for president. "Yeah, I did. My parents are dead for a long time, but my sister says, 'You have to vote for Obama, for what it would have meant for Mom and Dad.' I felt that too. It's a huge thing. This [history of racism] has been the worst blot on this country. All of a sudden this charming, intelligent guy just blows it away. It was great."

Can't the torture apologist and genocide advocate (and unlike Rush, Instapundit and Harry Reid, I can back up my accusations) come up with something original? It was stupid when Rush did it last week, it is even stupider when Instapundit makes the same "joke".

2) Bush didn't overspend. He was isolated and did what he had to for survival - a fact even his conservative "supporters" didn't get - because they, too, were blinkered by the direction of the war. They abandoned him, the cowards.

I get it - politics is a blood sport - but the conservative betrayal of George W. Bush will never sit right with me.

Why is it that--having made no effort whatsoever to find out--I'm pretty familiar with the college courses taken by Gore, Bush and Kerry, as well as their grades and SAT scores. But I have no idea at all what Obama studied in college.

Now it's true that I can infer that he learned no economics, but why are his records being suppressed? Any ideas?

The Bamster aced Creative Writing (although he hired a surrogate to do the work); flunked Econ 101, and didn't see the inside of his American History classroom at all.

On the other hand certain rooms in the Occidental College dorms are so full of pot smoke that the class of 2015 gets high just walking into the room. Or so an anonymous friend on the Oxy faculty told me.

You're right. But when was the last time taxes went down during a war? During wartime taxes go up to pay at least some of the bill (and to require shared sacrifice for the war).

And in World War II, over half of the excess cost of the war was financed through war bonds, bought primarily by U.S. citizens. Also, top marginal rates stayed very high into the sixties, in large part to pay for expenses for the war.

"Regardless of how he did at Columbia, he has failed Applied Economics for the past three years. That much is manifestly clear."

Not to him. To him, he mastered and has masterfully applied Applied Economics. And his self-assuming handlers and minions gratefully concur with him on that. He has served a small group of super-rich and/or super-ensconced brilliantly. And privately looks to throttle them utterly.

AReasonableMan said...You guys are aware that the great recession started after seven years of Bush and Cheney and six years of a Republican congress?

Compared to those idiots Obama has not done so badly.

===================1. Yes, we are as aware of that as the historical fact that many of Jimmy Carters economic problems started under Gerald Ford.While their predecessors poked the pootch....that doesn't get Jimmy Carter or Black Messiah off the hook.

2. While we generally think Ford and the Neocons "American Churchill" Dubya messed up....the consensus is Carter was worse than Gerald Ford and the growing consensus is that Obama is worse than Dubya.

3. People need to be reminded by Romney's Campaign just how close it was - with Democrats and many Independents sticking with a failed Jimmy Carter - to us having 4 more years of Jimmy instead of the 1st 4 years of Reagan cleaning up the damage and jump-starting the economy and jobs creation.

WW2 "war bonds" offered a 10-year yield to maturity of about 2.9%, which was greater than what was available on either regular Treasurys or AAA corporate debt at the time. So I don't see anything special about them. Their purpose was to raise revenue for immediate spending, as is the purpose of all bonds.

And while it's true that tax rates were jacked up to crazy levels during WW2, it's also true that there wasn't anyplace for US capital to flee then as there is today. Confiscatory tax rates like those are completely infeasible now.

And if you check, you'll find that the 2003 tax cuts were enacted in part b/c Bush was getting hammered by the media for the "jobless recovery." As Crack has been saying, every president operates w/in the constraints of his time. Obama bears the blame for our ongoing massive deficit b/c spending hasn't fallen even as "Bush's wars" have wound down and TARP expired.

You know, if we would have just put 1.3 trillion in the stimulus package instead of 800 billion, that would have properly pump primed the economy during this potential depression and prevented the long slog ahead of us, or so says Paul Krugman.

Obstructionists!

-sorry about the id tag, as it's the only way I can get a comment posted.

And while it's true that tax rates were jacked up to crazy levels during WW2, it's also true that there wasn't anyplace for US capital to flee then as there is today. Confiscatory tax rates like those are completely infeasible now.

And where exactly did I say that we should have raised taxes to WWII rates to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Tank said...Meanwhile, let's not forget Bush as the supporter of a brand new giant drug entitlement, and the many years he and his Repub Congress spent more and more money, when they were in a position to spend less.

That's not even touching on the money we've flushed down the toilet in Iraq and Afgan....

No, let's not pretend that Bush was an fiscal conservative, because that's a bunch of BS.

=================Agree.And the counter is not that Bush was great....but that Obama is worse.The American Churchill with the unlimited credit card and reckless oversight of our spending, the financial markets left the nation with a big steaming pile of shit that neither McCain nor Obama was intellectually up to trying to fix.

curveball? When did this mysterious person show up? During the Bush administration? Is that what you're trying to say?

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18,1998.

I have a lot more if you need more information about who was pedalling the WMD bullshit.

Tank, I'm rarely, if ever, wrong. Why? I work at it. I check sources, find multiples, question myself - anything to get at the truth. Some say I merely want to be right, but I don't see anything wrong with that.

I've been told many times - right here on this blog - that's my "problem".

I know it's a drag when I'm forced to puncture everyone's favorite balloons (Romney being a current one) but, I think, the country would work a lot better if we all tried to be so ruthless with not only our enemies but ourselves.

Freder Frederson said...And where exactly did I say that we should have raised taxes to WWII rates to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

You didn't. You said this:

And in World War II, over half of the excess cost of the war was financed through war bonds, bought primarily by U.S. citizens. Also, top marginal rates stayed very high into the sixties, in large part to pay for expenses for the war.

Actually, the top rates went into the 80s and 90s, but I was just granting your basic observation. Why so touchy?

In your search for a small debating point, tho, you missed my main point entirely: The Bush tax cuts were designed to stimulate the economy. Bush was under a lot of political pressure to do something. So he did. The "not paying for his wars" mantra is just silliness.

I'm always amazed at how powerful Barney Frank and the other guy are portrayed relative to Bush and mighty Chaney in regard to responsibility for the Great Recession. On one side we have the President of the United States and the most powerful Vice-President ever and on the other, a mid-level representative and a less than mid-level senator. Yet, somehow, it is the Democratic nobodies who are responsible for the great recession. What were Bush and Chaney doing to let this happen on their watch?

AReasonableMan, you do realize that we have three branches of government, don't you? How does someone like Chaney become the most powerful Vice-President ever? Did we have some kind of special powers? How about Biden, doesn't he hold the same position? The fact that he isn't powerful, is because, why?

1. I know Bush isn't running, but we don't need Jay and Crack reinventing history to make him look like a fiscal conservative.

2. Matthew - he did not try to correct things. His admin spent our money like a bunch of drunken sailors. Period. That Zero is worse, doesn't make Bush's record on spending good."

If this is the best you can do...

In fact, the fiscal meltdown was begun by the CRA, which was a Clinton/Carter ply but Bush did not cover himself with glory. Read Nicole Gelinas' book "After the Fall" for the whole story.

I have videos on my blog showing Bush administration officials being berated by the post 2006 Democrats for suggesting that all was not well with mortgage backed securities. for example.

consider the experience of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, one of the GOP’s bright young lights who decided in the 1990s that Fan and Fred needed more supervision. As he held town hall meetings in his district, he soon noticed a man in a well-tailored suit hanging out amid the John Deere caps and street clothes. Mr. Ryan was being stalked by a Fannie lobbyist monitoring his every word.

On another occasion, he was invited to a meeting with the Democratic mayor of Racine, which is in his district, though he wasn’t sure why. When he arrived, Mr. Ryan discovered that both he and the mayor had been invited separately — not by each other, but by a Fannie lobbyist who proceeded to tell them about the great things Fannie did for home ownership in Racine.

When none of that deterred Mr. Ryan, Fannie played rougher. It called every mortgage holder in his district, claiming (falsely) that Mr. Ryan wanted to raise the cost of their mortgage and asking if Fannie could tell the congressman to stop on their behalf. He received some 6,000 telegrams. When Mr. Ryan finally left Financial Services for a seat on Ways and Means, which doesn’t oversee Fannie, he received a personal note from Mr. Raines congratulating him. “He meant good riddance,” says Mr. Ryan.

That was an excellent Bill Whittle link at 1:27. Everyone should watch it and I'm dead serious.

Who the hell is Bill Whittle and how can he get so many basic facts wrong? That's what I was thinking as I wasted nine minutes of my life watching the video Crack linked to. He just parroted the same drivel that has been the Bush apologist mantra for the last ten years.

Turns out little of what they teach about economics is true. The market is not an efficient processor of economic news, oil prices are not driven by supply and demand, and the government does not smooth out the bumps in the economy through fiscal and monetary policy. We have to sort out the reality for ourselves. For a community organizer with no business background, it must be really baffling.

A bit off topic, for which I apologize--but were the Romney team to win, it would be very interesting were Romney to appoint Erskine Bowles as the secetary of the Treasury. Bowles is a serious guy and would, I think, work well with the a Romney administration.

Given my imperfect understanding of Econ 101 which is usually microeconomics, I fail to understand why increasing taxes creates job growth--in fact just the opposite--increasing taxes reduces demand and suppliers will adjust their supplies downward to find the equilibrium point. There are, of course, ways to turn to supply side: get producers back in the market place to increase supplies and increase demand. A bit more problematic than the effect of the demand curve.

I actually remember those WSJ opeds. I thought Robert Bartley was writing them. It was almost weekly that the WSJ would editorialize about the fragility of Fannie/Freddie. The tone had that midwestern skepticism to them.

I had not heard that story before about Paul Ryan though. The story is awful and 100% like the modus operandi of the Fan/Fred lobbying organization.

Cedarford- agree in part. Tax cuts encourage the rich who have the luxury of timing income recognition through investment sales etc to do so thus increasing tax revenue. Somewhere along the way this warped into the idea of job creation. It does seem that trickle down does not work well. American industry gutted more by management lack of understanding of changing global economy than simply free trade. But definitely other countries take unfair advantage propping up industry with government funds.

1.Tax cuts for the rich do not cause the "Jobs Creators"(TM) to creat jobs. Zero private sector job growth from 2000 to 2012.

2. Growing concentration of wealth in a few tens of thousands of megamillionaires and billionaires does not "trickle down" to a shrinking middle class.

3. Free trade for Freedom Lovers does not lift all boats. It instead gutted American industry and jobs.

The points about "trickle down" are fair -- that discredited theory is simply false. But I don't think tax rates have anything to do with outsourcing. That was caused by the simple reality that we cannot compete with the cheap labor offered overseas. Lowering taxes is not going to change that one bit. Raising them may well make it worse.

American industry gutted more by management lack of understanding of changing global economy than simply free trade.

Yes, and by labor protections which were good ideas when conceived but have gotten out of hand and are holding us back.

The only way this is going to get equalized is (1) we reduce labor protection and regulation to allow the price of labor to be brought back down to fair levels; and (2) labor protection and regulation increases in countries like China to bring much-needed protection to the workers there and drive the costs of labor up to fair levels.

I think (2) will eventually happen, as it did in this country in the 1880s. We seem to be making limited progress on (1), but not enough.

From the people within the administration who were charged with fabricating a case for war.

It wasn't "bad" intel, it was intel that was twisted and distorted and interpreted in the most elastic manner in order to justify their war. It was a case of coming to their conclusion first and fixing the evidence to support it after the fact.

Cford - I bet if you checked job creation between 2001-2007, you'd see a big increase. Of course, we lost what 6 million jobs since 2007-2008.

And lower taxes do add jobs. I am no fan of the term "job creators" but if you are a higyh earner and have more left over after paying taxes, you will tend to spend some of it on stuff like a new car, ktichen, vacation, investment property and those activities support existing jobs and/or create new jobs.

Or we can give more of our money to Uncle Sam and he will create another govt drone sucking on the public teat year after year.

Which of these scenarios adds more to the economy and the public good?

There was a plenty of private sector growth during that time--then atrophy, and death. Perhaps not in your industry.

2. Growing concentration of wealth in a few tens of thousands of megamillionaires and billionaires does not "trickle down" to a shrinking middle class.

Not exactly who you have in mind here specifically: Gates? Buffett? Slim? The OWSers generally target Wall Street types as the scourge, yet they oversee an industry which in turn oversees enormous deferred tax wealth. It's no wonder the Federal Government stepped in to save them--it was trying to save it's own fiscal future. Many individuals who have (or had) retirement accounts "on Wall Street" understand this. IMO, things would have been much worse without intervention.

3. Free trade for Freedom Lovers does not lift all boats. It instead gutted American industry and jobs.

It floated a lot of boats here and abroad, enriched lives, and tried to do as much as Norman Borlaug and Fritz Haber (though I'm not sure anyone could do that). It caused foreseeable disequilibrium in markets which will not go away overnight, even if reversed. Cataclysm (World Wars) usually intervene to realign such disequilibria. We'll see.

@Crack: That was an excellent Bill Whittle link at 1:27. Everyone should watch it and I'm dead serious.

I wondered what Whittle thinks of Mitt Romney? hint

Not a big fan. And he understands NewAge pretty well, too. (He's written a few decent pieces on the subject, though he's not as deep into it as I am - but then, who is?) Having seen that, I think I ought to make something clear here:

I'm not telling anyone not to vote for Romney, but to stop with the Obot-like gushing and fawning and, for our own protection and the protection of our country, see (and regard) the man - if he even is a man - for who and what he is.

I can't vote for him - he's a cultist (amongst other things) and that would go against everything I stand for - just as I couldn't vote for Obama, for that same reason, and others.

Just like in 2008, this is not an election conservatives should cheer - even if we win. We should be threatening this man from Day One - as I am about his taxes - demanding he repeal ObamaCare, etc. - and (and this is no joke) keep his fucking cult in check.

If we allow him to enter the White House, while pretending (or deluding ourselves) the Mormon "church" isn't a real threat to our democracy, then - no matter what happens - it will be lost.

Finally, chickelit, I hope you paid attention to what Whittle said about people who can voice a *consistent* conservative vision. That's what I'm trying to do, whether anybody likes it or not or (in the case of Romney) whether what I say seems immediately apparent or not. I study cults, cultish thinking, groupthink, and any process (spirituality, religion, cultism, self-help, business even) that fosters mental slavery. That's my particular contribution to conservative thought and I think it's a vitally important one if we're ever going to be a *truly free* people again.

It depends on how broadly you define "stuff like that." From a quick scan through Columbia requirements for PolySci undergrads, it looks like low level econ courses are among a Chinese take-out menu "pick 3 from column A" type list. That's the way it was where I went to school as well, although econ and statistics were a couple of things that I took because they seemed like they'd be worthwhile. While he may have taken one, it's not clear that he had to. If somebody with a more thorough understanding of what's required of Columbia students would like to weigh in and correct any misunderstanding I may have, I'd be happy to listen.

That was caused by the simple reality that we cannot compete with the cheap labor offered overseas.

I strongly disagree with this statement. What makes cheap labor even a choice is the fact that labor is so expensive in the United States. Why? Because of regulation designed for the 30s economy applied to today's economy. And government policy advocated by both Democrats and Republicans, has made it even worse.

Today, the regulatory environment must consider that labor is mobile. Not just that it is mobile inside the United States, but that other countries have rapidly grown to create havens for mobile, skilled labor, to practically airdrop into new parts of the globe.

An actual energy policy that established long term goals in terms of what the government could excel at and what the government should stay far away from, would do wonders for competitive job growth in manufacturing. We still have a skilled workforce, but an aging one. The younger generations are not equipped for the same jobs. There is absolutely no incentive tied to government subsidized loans to steer students into career paths where such skills are in demand. The government will subsidize your study of figs or aerospace or the mating habits of turtles. Just like Medicare, it says all outcomes are the same when they are not.

I do so love seeing the same crystalline argument again in its pristine form again even though we've seen it a trillion times and it's been smashed over and over and over, still here it is, the indestructible crystalline argument again in its pristine form as if nothing at all has happened to it. It reaffirms my faith in eternal life.

We've got people calling for higher energy costs in order to manipulate supply and demand... higher cost, less demand... for the purpose of encouraging us to use less energy.

It seems to me that higher energy prices raise the cost of everything, your gas, your groceries, heating, cooling, construction, consumer goods... which means that cost of living is higher.

Domestic labor costs *must* be connected to cost of living. If cost of living is lower then lower (and competitive) labor costs make sense. It's tempting to think it's all as simple as Chinese forced labor in horrible conditions, and we refuse to accept horrible conditions for American workers, BUT there are other ways besides super low pay and horrible conditions to make the American labor market competitive...

And wouldn't the first and most obvious of those be abundant and inexpensive energy?

Not just on the side of cost of living and what a worker needs to make, but on overhead and transportation and all the other costs of doing business too.

But we've got people in power who want to make energy more expensive ON PURPOSE.

I don't do "financial stuff" like some of you do, so am I missing something obvious here?

@Robert Cook ....I don't know about you, but when I went to college, I was required to take Econ 101, even though my major had nothing to do with business or finance.

Dang. You must be nearly as old as me. Back in the day everyone took your basic "Econ 101" usually with a text book by Paul Samuelson, the neo-Keynesian economist. Didn't matter if you were in Liberal Arts, Engineering, Finance, any Science field, or whatever. It was "core" for everything.

I don't do "financial stuff" like some of you do, so am I missing something obvious here?

Nope. I like your kitchen table economic analysis a lot better than what I had in mind.

I still find it baffling that we have half the number of oil refineries in the United States today than we did in 1980, but there are 90 million more vehicles on the road in the same time period. Many closed because it was too costly to comply with new regulations. Sound familiar?

Robert Cook said... Allen S points out that the Clinton White House was peddling the same WMD horseshit as did the Bush administration subsequently.

So?

This doesn't prove Saddam had WMD--he didn't--it merely proves the two administrations had the same desire to oust Saddam from power and were using the same phony charges to indict him.

From the NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story...

Saturday, Aug. 13, 2005 10:45 p.m. EDTChemical Weapons Found in Iraq

U.S. troops raided a suspected insurgent chemical weapons factory in northern Iraq, finding about 1,500 gallons of dangerous substances, the U.S. military said Saturday.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a military spokesman, said 11 chemicals were found in the hideout in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, "which are dangerous by themselves, and mixed together they would become even more dangerous."

Who the hell cares about George Bush or Bill Clinton? Neither is running for president and nothing either says or does has any real effect on Congress or the budget (or, I should say, the lack of a budget) or the out-of-control spending that's going to take us all to perdition. Whiny Obama and whiny democrats and whiny republicans about who did what in previous administrations piss me off. Deal with today and tomorrow, you blockheads, because if you continue to ignore the simple math of the entitlement disaster, if you continue to engage in the politics of personal attacks and hyperbola, if you continue to try to deflect attention from serious policy discussions, we are going down the tubes. I have had enough of the juvenile jokes and posturing; it's worse than high school and about as helpful to resolving the enormous problems we face as a country. I am 61 years old and I am ashamed of my generation for what we've done to a great country and for what we are doing to our progeny. You want to keep blathering about how many years of individual tax returns Romney has produced, the nebulous college years of Obama, "fairness" and redistribution of income and wealth, throwing granny off the cliff, mischaracterizing the indisputable success of businessmen such as Romney at Bain, demonizing success and wealth in general,well, all I can say is fuck you and get out of the way of the few remaining adults willing to deal with the problems in a realistic way.

I didn't have to take Econ 101. I think there was a list to chose from with that on it and I chose Anthro 101 instead.

I didn't take Econ mostly because we'd had Econ in High School as part of some other class and it didn't make any sense. I couldn't even *make* it make sense. So I decided that this was simply something that was beyond my understanding and best left to others.

Only recently did I come to the conclusion that our little bit of "this is how money works" I had in High School was explained with the Keynesian model only. Money itself created wealth through circulation. That's all I remember of it. It didn't make sense to me that the slice of interest was *added* with each iteration of borrowing, because wouldn't it be taken *off*?

So I skipped Econ in college on account of my brain just wouldn't GO there.

…mischaracterizing the indisputable success of businessmen such as Romney at Bain,…Ah, so you think selling worthless supplements and taking money from multi-level marketing pyramid schemes are "the indisputable success of businessmen" nowadays?

Great.

Do me a favor and go back to being "ashamed of my generation for what we've done to a great country and for what we are doing to our progeny."

I do find this claim about President Obama humorous, maybe even more than the claim that Harry Reid is a pederast. It cannot be disproved until and unless he releases his college transcripts. And, yet, due to his abysmal performance economically, it sounds quite plausible.

Though I agree that the President is an economic illiterate (as are most in Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi), and probably had little if any interest in learning (as contrasted to Bill Clinton), I do suspect that this story was fabricated. As they say, when it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

Crack Sez:1) I don't have to reinvent things - I always tell the truth. It's the rest of you who follow like blind poodles, sniffing the big dogs' ass. You don't use reason, but go with popularity - like a high school clique - and I'll respect you just as much for it.

I love the imagery. Glad you are posting again.

I also try to always tell the truth. It gets me in a lot of trouble.

However, I have a suspicion, and am wondering about. Do you have a child you raised, or are raising?

When I think of your approach, I think you do not, or that you have a child, perhaps an adult, out there, that you did not raise in a day to day fashion. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If I'm right, I'll tell you what leads me to think this (because, I don't know).

Eric said...You realize the vice president has no power beyond breaking ties in the Senate, right? That Darth Cheney was a boogeyman created entirely in the collective mind of the left?

The strength and power of Cheney as Vice was initially promulgated from right, in part, it seemed at the time, to shore up Bush's conservative credentials. But the issue is the economy. This is a quote from Cheney speaking to Paul O'Neill, then Treasury Secretary, "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." It is incredible that in a time of relative prosperity they failed to make any serious effort to pay down the national debt. This is economic malpractice. For republicans to now complain about Obama's large deficits in a time of economic crisis strikes many of us in the middle as more than a little hypocritical. We would be in much better shape now if Bush and Cheney had just managed to meet the standards set by the otherwise largely deplorable Clinton.

So lets talk about that then. It might actually involve policy debate or something.

Can you give any support for your guy having a plan that makes sense to increase confidence in the future for businesses, to protect Medicare or offer a solution for when it falls apart for us younger folks?

Because while it's rational to want some assurance that the "new boss" would actually follow through and be different from the "old boss", I just don't see... Bush did it... Obama did it more... lets have more Obama, as being particularly coherent.

Romney has managed to make all the wrong noises on starting yet another war in the middle east, just like Bush. Ryan's budget ultimately is primarily about giving another tax cut to high earners. Any serioius deficit reduction is very very far in the future. Just like you know who.

I am going to add my 2 cents here. I never in my life considered Bush a conservative. In fact, he was the originator of the term "NEOCON. Any time you have to add a descriptor to something, you are not that original thing.

In point of fact the Republican Party hates conservatives. Look at the treatment the they give the Tea Party people. The Republican Party is made up mostly of right leaning Democrats. They want to spend and tax, just at a slower pace than the true Democratic Party.

Here's a simple tell...whenever a politician speaks of a reduction in the spending rate as a cut, not a reduction in spending, then you have a progressive. Progressive D or R truly does not matter.

I hated that Zero one, but was also happy, because I foresaw that this would lead to an eventual sundering of the progressives out of the Republican Party.

The base is conservative, the party elites are not. That is going to change. It will take decades, but we will win. We are the future. We have the magic of math on our side. We will either cut spending, or we will cease to exist as a country. It really is that simple. Even the Governor of Ilinois recognizes that fact. (strange how Zero, and Governor Moonbeam can't)

Revenant, I know we've had our disagreements about "spiritual" matters, but this is an honest question on stuff that can be truly nailed down, conclusively, in the here-and-now:

Why do you guys talk to idiots?

You give them evidence. Sound reasoning. Links, video - whatever it takes - and they still come back with the unsubstantiated rigamarole we (in the real world) all know was handed down from the DNC.

I agree that the the usual suspects have no desire to understand why they might be wrong, but there are usually a whole lot of lurkers for every individual commenter, and they may not be as intellectually dishonest.

AReasonableMan - " "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." It is incredible that in a time of relative prosperity they failed to make any serious effort to pay down the national debt. This is economic malpractice. For republicans to now complain about Obama's large deficits in a time of economic crisis strikes many of us in the middle as more than a little hypocritical.

=================You have a partial point...but in the end it is up to pols and the public to abandon failed ideas that do not serve America at a given point.It is no excuse to keep a Jimmy Carter in 1980 - that "Republicans messed up too under Gerald Ford" so no one can complain about Jimmy.

The idea is to get rid of Jimmy and not have a replay of the failed Republican ideas of the past under "holy dogma".....but new and better leadership.

With Obama the idea is to get rid of him.And put the Republicans on notice that no more reckless spending sorts like the DeLays, Frists, Billy Tausins, Hasterts, Cheneys, Dubyas and Schwarzeneggers are acceptable. (All those assholes are gone, BTW)Add in that even with the worst of the Republican bunch gone, we still have problems with the endless trillion plus dollar wars the Neocons want, with Free Trade and Trickledown Idealogues, the cancer of the Grover Norquist pledge.We also have to recognize many notions Reagan had were wrong, or only worked once in a particular time with particular conditions 30 years ago.

The wrong noises about starting another war? Personally, Obama never saw a bomb he didn't feel manly about dropping so I have a hard time with that. And what is a "wrong noise" in your opinion? Can you show me where Romney has said anything harsher than Obama says? I don't think you can, unless it's just that naming Israel as an ally is one of the "code words" that we're supposed to recognize, in which case, again... where did Obama show any reluctance to go to war even without using code words about Israel?

"Primarily about giving a tax cut to high earners" is political spin and moronic without a proposed alternative plan to increase economic confidence and get the economy started. Obama is still demonizing business as his principle tactic for encouraging job growth, and you want me to be upset about incentives for job growth? Play the class warfare card some more, because eventually someone will get it right.

I. Want. A. Job.

What does Obama offer?

Deficit reduction is far in the future with the Republican plan, but as Geithner explained, "We don't have a definitive solution; we just don't like yours."

So if I'm going to get deficit reduction 20 years from now and a pony *too*, I would like to know how that is going to happen.

People have explained again and again that we could confiscate every dollar from the "rich" and it wouldn't put a dent in our financial problems... so how is Obama going to do it?

> Obama has flunked Eco 101 with every budget too - so his many does that make?

OK, Mr. Persnickety, read that and make sense =)

Yeah, right. Who gives a crap what Obamao got in college. His record sucks. Why is that? Are the people he has hired stupid? Probably not. The important thing is the people he is choosing to guide him are the wrong ones. Perhaps they put ideology before fact, perhaps Obamao is too stupid to know who are the right people. It simply doesn't matter.

Yet, the press continues to allow obvious Bull Crap, like Romney killed some woman. OK, we get it.

Ann had something like this recently, which was don't tell me the sumptuousness of meat, yet here she invites the same thing. Maybe she will berate us later for falling into her insidious trap of reacting to her invitation.

I keep reading good peoples' comments about "budget" this and "budget" that....etc. What "budget" are you talking about. Congress has not passed a formal budget (13 appropriation categories)in 4 years and does not intend to pass one now for 2013. No, they plan on another Continuing Resolution.

Without, again, going to in to great tedious detail, as a former "fed" and military type, let me assure you, if you will, that NOTHING enables government wasteful expenditures better than a series of Continuing Resolutions. Nothing. Period.

What would you think or say if Congress refused to pass Continuing Resolutions?

Until we can return to a Congressionally budgeted government, all the rest of this "budget" discussion is pointless, IMO. CR's end on end is like giving a 16 girl a no limit Neiman Marcus credit card and telling to have fun.

The points about "trickle down" are fair -- that discredited theory is simply false.

Really?

So your explanation of the 18+ million jobs created during the Reagan presidency is ______?

---------------is______________....

1. Disproven by Clinton jacking up rates on the rich (or in right wing republican language - Our Beloved Jobs Creators (TM) )Yet creating 24.5 million jobs during his Presidency.

2. Disproven by Dubya and Obama cutting taxes on the rich. 12 years of tax cuts, trillions in new deficits, growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the 1%, shrinking middle class...and ZERO private sector jobs created in those 12 years.

The truth is market conditions, new technology, and hopefully new restrictions on free trade to keep the rich from offshoring goods and services needed in America made by their cheap CHina labor poor will drive job creation.True in Clintons day and Reagans. Tax cuts for the wealthy did not create jobs...entrepreneurs and the market and new IT did.

Add that another compelling thing Reagan and Clinton did was greatly assure the business community that things would be as certain as possible regarding no new regs and domestic and global conditions as stable as possible for promoting investment.

The Idiot Obama failed to follow Reagan or Clinton in nearly anything except ape Reagan on tax cuts for the rich "Jobs Creators(TM)". Bush similarly.....ignoring most economic matters besides implement the Billy Tausin windfall for BIg Pharma (13 trillion unfunded liability out to 2030) while fixating on Neocon Wars of adventure and lauding the Hero Troops who look like they lost two trillion dollar wars. (Lost in the sense that Iraq and Afghanistan nation-building are complete fucking disasters for the interests of America)

I also have little patience for those who know they can't argue the facts so set up their own strawmen to knock down (*cough crack emcee*).

Just proves my point; too many people want to deflect everything to silly, juvenile personal attacks. Oh well, no more time to waste reading any more of this; I have to stop reading blogs and figure out how to generate some business.

" "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." It is incredible that in a time of relative prosperity they failed to make any serious effort to pay down the national debt. This is economic malpractice. For republicans to now complain about Obama's large deficits in a time of economic crisis strikes many of us in the middle as more than a little hypocritical."

No mention of Tip O'Neill there. Reagan had two issues that he worked on; getting the economy going and winning the Cold War.

He got both accomplished.

He had Democrats running Congress so the spending never got cut enough although he did manage to hold the line some.

After 1994, the economy was going good and Clinton got away with his tax increases. I blame the GOP Congress for not keeping the spending down after 2000 although there was a recession after the internet bubble popped in 2000. Then came 2001.

Bush was no conservative but he did warn about the housing bubble. The Democrats kept that going and fought off all attempts to rein ion Fannie/Freddie. Of course it was Raines/Gorelick/Johnson running them. All good Democrats.

A lot of people are incapable of distinguishing between power and influence, it seems. Bush had power. Cheney had a lot of influence on Bush... and power consisting of the right to break ties in the Senate.

Revenent - the argument is about if tax cuts for the rich (the Jobs Creators (TM) ) - actually creates jobs..As Republicans ferverently state is dogma according to Saint Reagan.

The evidence suggests it doesn't. Thanks to seeing how tax policy impacted job creation under Clinton, Bush, and The Biggest Loser.

It has a marginal role. Jacking the top rate on the richest back up to 90% would be harmful. But back to where the tax rate was when the Clinton Jobs creation machine was running and the Republicans had a gathering of serious fiscal hawks from 1994-1998??I think the mindless minions of Grover Norquist are full of shit.

Create jobs?

1. Declare a national emergency and state that laws and regulations not important to public safety but which kill economic growth are suspended..

2. Declare the US is willing to suspend taxes on repatriation of the 3 trillion US companies have parked offshore provided it is invested in growing the US private sector growth....not T-Bills to fuel more Fed Government spending.

3. Tariffs. Each million in trade deficit costs America 12.4 jobs (factoring in the economic multiplier). We have lost industries wholesale and many should be recaptured as a matter of being vital to America's interests.Money from tariffs would have to be purposely directed to R&D, to strategic investment in new technologies or to direct application in paying down the massive Debt.

In fairness, the House has voted out budgets each year since Republicans resumed the majority in '11 (Pelosi-led House did not pass a budget in '10). The Senate hasn't voted out a budget in 1,200+ days.

Here's a deal for you democrats. We go back to your beloved Clinton tax rates. As long as we go back to your beloved Clinton spending levels. Otherwise shut the fuck up about how great the Clinton budget surplus was. But you won't because that would mean cutting spending, and if you did that, no one would vote for your pandering,vote buying,lying, slanderous, racist, asses.

Ps.

Why the hell do you jackasses think that just because Bush did it, Zero should get a pass on it. People hated Bush by the end of his term, and Zero has surpassed him in every douchebag category you can name.

Your cyclical thinking would be very amusing if it was so headache inducing.